John McCain for Sale: The K Street Candidate

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

John McCain has had at least 118 lobbyists running his campaign and raising money for him.  For a partial list see: McCain Has Had At Least 118 Lobbyists Running His Campaign & Raising Money For Him  Nearly all of his advisers, fund-raisers and top staffers have worked on K Street. McCain’s Team of Lobbyists | The New York Observer

The national news media have latched onto McCain’s lobbyist connections, largely because McCain has portrayed himself as a "reformer" against special interests over the years.  If you are going to be a self-righteous reformer, you had better be a saint and not a sinner.  The media loves nothing better than exposing a saint as a sinner.

"Perhaps the senator hasn’t been paying attention for the past few decades, for he somehow seems to have surrounded himself with exactly the kind of Washington hustlers he professes to despise."

This may explain why McCain recently adopted a McCain campaign conflicts of interest policy.  Unfortunately for him, the policy has already resulted in at least five of his top campaign aids resigning over the past couple of weeks.  A Fifth Top Aide To McCain Resigns – washingtonpost.com 

"More than a few Republican lobbyists in Washington are scratching their heads these days, asking: So this is the thanks we get?"  Lobbyists: This is our thanks? – Jeanne Cummings – Politico.com   McCain’s lobbyist supporters are expressing their consternation with him:

“If it was OK to have these people working for you in February, why is it not OK today?” asked one Republican lobbyist who counts a friend among the new McCain outcast class.

“McCain’s self-righteous [expletive] has caught up with him. Now he’s got himself in a jam,” said another Republican lobbyist who asked to remain anonymous because he is a campaign volunteer.

Said another McCain supporter: “I find it a little offensive. It was good enough to get my $2,300 donation. If we’re not good enough, then send my check back. It pisses me off.”

“I frankly don’t understand the policy, and what parts of it I do understand actually don’t make sense,” said Jan Baran, a Republican campaign finance legal expert. “Even though someone has been a lobbyist for the last 30 years, if they are not a lobbyist for the next five months, they are OK for the campaign?”

But McCain’s conflicts of interest policy is not zero-tolerance.  It comes with convenient loopholes (like his private jet loophole in McCain-Feingold) which allows his top two advisers, Charlie Black and Rick Davis – both long-time Washington lobbyists – to stay on.  Campaign manager Rick Davis in 2006 took a leave of absence from his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort & Freedman, but his name is still a big draw on its shingle.  Chief political adviser Charlie Black, is the founder of another of Washington’s biggest lobbying houses.

"Black provides a private voice and a public face for McCain, he also leads his lobbying firm, which offers corporate interests and foreign governments the promise of access to the most powerful lawmakers. Some of those companies have interests before the Senate and, in particular, the Commerce Committee, of which McCain is a member.

Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus."  The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists

These guys are some seriously ethically challenged pieces of work:

"[M]r. Black, a longtime Republican operative whose lobbying activities first drew negative attention during the Reagan administration, when he represented such august figures as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi. Marcos and Mobutu were infamous despots with a penchant for looting their own nation’s economies as well as any American aid that came their way, presumably with Mr. Black’s assistance. The theft of taxpayer funds by those two crooks eventually mounted into the billions, and they savagely repressed democratic forces with U.S. arms. As for Savimbi, he was merely an authoritarian thug, a Maoist ideologue and, according to some reports, a sometime cannibal.

We can safely assume that Mr. Black never returned any of the stolen blood money that paid for his services. Recently, he has suggested that U.S. government support for those dictatorial regimes somehow justified his profiteering, as if he weren’t involved in shoring up that support.

[M]r. Davis was toiling in the Reagan White House as a cabinet functionary, where one of his jobs included liaison with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, site of a major domestic looting scandal during those years. When he testified about his role in those events, his recollections of the influence peddling that had given housing contracts to well-connected Republicans were dim at best. But when he left the public payroll, he landed at the lobbying firm of Paul Manafort, who had gotten one of the most profitable of the HUD sweetheart deals for a $30 million development in New Jersey.

* * *

For several years, Mr. Davis represented G-TECH, the lottery and gambling conglomerate that has been embroiled in bribery scandals in several countries, including the United States. During that same period, his firm also represented the government of Nigeria, among the most flamboyantly corrupt regimes in the world, at the time under the boot heel of the murderous General Sani Abacha.

More recently he has cultivated the business of Oleg Deripaska, the Russian mega-billionaire, who made his fortune by seizing control of Russia’s aluminum industry during the violent “Aluminum Wars.” That history earned him a reputation as an unscrupulous mafioso and put him on the State Department’s visa watch list until certain American lobbyists fixed the problem. According to The Washington Post, Mr. Davis arranged at least two meetings in Europe between Mr. Deripaska, a close ally of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and Mr. McCain, a critic of Mr. Putin’s oligarchical and undemocratic government."

McCain’s Team of Lobbyists | The New York Observer

Yeah, this is the kind of "good government" reformers we want working from inside the White House. 

Campaign Money Watch has established a web site where you can sign a petition to Fire the lobbyists!

McCain’s new conflicts of interest policy also ensnared his close friends Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.  The conflicts of interest policy expressly provides that no person with a campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate. 

Sens. Lieberman and  Graham both hold chairs for the McCain camp as well as positions on the board of advisers of Vets for Freedom, an advocacy group that supports the Iraq war.  In a commercial released on its website, the organization directly took on Obama over his willingness to negotiate with Iranian leadership.  Lieberman, Graham Violating McCain Campaign’s Ethics Rules? – Politics on The Huffington Post  On Wednesday, Sens. Lieberman and Graham requested "a leave from their positions" from Vets for Freedom.  Lieberman and Graham, Senators for McCain, Leave Group After Ads Attacking Obama – NYTimes.com  Sorry boys, the conflicts of interest policy expressly states that you must resign your position from the McCain campaign.  Yet another loophole.

A more serious problem for Larry, Curly and Moe is that McCain has been parroting the very same lines used in the Vets for Freedom ad in his speeches.  McCain’s New Anti-Obama Line Borrowed From Attack Ad – Politics on The Huffington Post  It is a violation of federal law for candidates to coordinate their campaign activities with independent campaign committees or 527s.  There appears to be no serious effort to maintain a firewall between these two organizations.  I smell yet another FEC complaint. 

Finally, it was revealed this week that McCain’s campaign co-chair, former Senator Phil Gramm, was being paid by Swiss bank UBS "to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show."  McCain co-chair lobbied for bank while shaping McCain economic policy – Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.com  UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year.  Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman.  Yet another loophole.

Gramm has been touted as a possible Secretary of the Treasury.  How has his current employer, UBS fared recently?  Bloomberg.com: Exclusive  "In the nine months ended on March 31, UBS lost 25.4 billion Swiss francs ($24.3 billion), more than any other bank caught in the worldwide credit crunch."  "Also in May, UBS said it would slash 5,500 jobs by the middle of next year, including 2,600 immediately at the investment bank. UBS will sell or close its New York-based municipal bond department, which employs about 300 people."  This instills confidence in McCain’s economic policies, doesn’t it?

And then there is this:

"On May 13, a former UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, was charged in Florida with helping UBS clients evade taxes on money deposited in accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein-based financial adviser Mario Staggl was also charged.

The case is part of a larger probe by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. UBS says it’s cooperating with the investigation." Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

If McCain were to actually enforce his conflicts of interest policy, he would soon find himself riding alone on his "on the take express."

More importantly, what does this say about McCain’s character and judgment when he surrounds himself with such ethically challenged individuals?  As the old saying goes, "show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are."

But the real question is why, at this late date, McCain is pretending to be shocked by the “conflicts of interest” in which he stands neck deep, and why he dismissed five lobbyists while keeping dozens of others, including his top advisers, because they claim to be “retired” or on “leave of absence” from their business. McCain’s Team of Lobbyists | The New York Observer  McCain’s hypocrisy knows no limits.

I am shocked! Shocked to find that lobbying is going on here! (Your campaign contributions sir).